Forever Bound
by The Rose Blue Prince
Summary: Rated T. Being a puppet comes with more than just your own set of strings... Happy Danny Angst Day!


**Forever Bound**

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Danny Phantom.

A Danny Phantom FanFiction By: The Rose Blue Prince

* * *

I am a Bound Soul, my heart unbeating beneath the layers of thick, impenetrable linen.

I can't move; my body lies forever still, frozen in place.

I can't breathe; my chest never moving in the rhythmic patterns that breath causes.

I can't see; my eyes shielded beneath a thick, black, shimmering veil.

I can't do anything unless someone orders me too.

My eyes are dull and hallow when they look at things, the blank gray irises unrecognizable from their once shimmering sapphire blue. No life shines within them, they are a broken pair of orbs, shattered beyond repair.

I remember clearly when I was first broken, it is not a happy memory, even though I distinctly remember myself having something called hope back then.

It was when I was sold like an animal for the fourth time, forced to stand on a podium on a stage in front of a large group of masked buyers in gaudy, expensively tailored suits. My hands tied with a sharp, tight wire behind my back, my feet shackled together with a ghost-proof metal.

It was degrading, to say the least.

Now, I had been auctioned my off like that before, sure, but only when I had reached the fourth time had I really begun to understand exactly what my life had become.

It had become an unbearable hell, that's what. The only sanctuary I had left was deep within my mind, for I wasn't even able to fly anymore (flying used to be my escape, I was able to just let go and be free as I glided carelessly across the sky), but I wasn't allowed. My wings had been clipped, my ankles locked together, leaving me chained to the ground. It made me feel like a caged animal. In fact, it still does.

I had also known this before, of course, but reality never really caught up with me quickly; I clung to my ignorance for dear life as long as possible.

And I had also fought it back then as well. It made me feel good at the time, the rebellion. But now that's a faraway thing, only seen and reachable in my hazy half-dreams (I don't dream much anymore).

Forced to be whatever my _owner _- I spit out the word in my mind - wishes me to be. A butler. A maid. A thief. A bodyguard. A minion. An assassin. _  
_

I am ashamed to admit that I've been them all.

Because beneath the linen of my invisible bonds, I am attached to strings. Strings that have been cut mercilessly numerous times before being handed off to my next puppet master.

For that is all I am anymore; a broken puppet, a toy that has been carelessly tossed around and played with one too many times.

And yet... I accept my fate. I cling to those worn, weathered strings for all they're worth, because, like most humans, I am afraid to die. To stop existing. To not be remembered.

I shudder at the instinctual fear.

However, a small part of me remains who I once was; the hero, the brother, the friend. It's like a dim little light in a forgotten corner of my mind, constantly flickering in and out of sight. I worry that eventually it will cease to exist all together. Then I really would be the perfect puppet.

The light goes out once again, and I scream mutely before it flickers back on, not as bright as before. I breathe a quiet sigh of relief.

I trace the thick scars that wrap around my arms and stomach idly, a haunting little tune clawing its way out of my throat.

My gaze runs unseeingly around my cage, white-hot sparks of the mad beginning to creep their way into my gray eyes.

My thoughts begin to slip away, like water through my fingers, as thick, warm streams of blood trail down my pale cheeks from my eyes. The liquid slides off my face and I hear it plop against the cold, dirty metal of the floor.

_Plop, splash._

_Plop, splash._

_Plop, splash._

_Plop, splash._

Warm blood slashes against the back of my hand, and I tilt my head to the side slightly in a sick form of amusement.

I had tried to steal some bread from the kitchen today, mostly out of spite, but my newest master - the twelfth if I had been counting, which I was - had caught me.

And he did something to my eyes.

An insane laugh suddenly fills the room I'm in and it takes me a second to realize that I'm the one laughing, my earlier thoughts now completely gone, leaving my mind empty.

I smile the smile of the lunatic as the crimson liquid continues to pour out of my dead gray eyes.

_Plop, splash._

_Plop, splash._

_Plop, splash._

_Plop, splash..._

I can have my emotions changed with the flip of the switch, and yet I never do the switching. I can have my thoughts derailed and set back onto a different track with a simple choice, and I am never the one that changes direction.

Attached to the strings of a slave, I am a marionette. I am simply a shell that is filled with the will of another, doing their bidding whenever they please.

For I lost my own will a long time ago.

My now gray eyes look fleetingly up at the newest person that holds my strings, the man appearing in front of me suddenly. And I feel the phantom feeling of fear, knowing that I had retreated into my mind for too long and that I was going to get hurt because of it.

But even that detached feeling flashes across my previously empty features, just serving to make him angrier.

Vaguely I remember this master teaching me a lesson about what he called 'worthless emotions'.

_Never show them, _he had said in his silky voice, a voice that sounded like a dagger being ran across your cheek, piercing the soft skin and drawing forth the life liquid, _They are a sign of weakness, and in your case, _his hand shot out, grabbbinng my chin, effectively forcing me to look him in the eye, _Free will._

I felt a cold hand smack me in the face, bringing me out of the memory. Looking up at the hand's owner, I locked my eyes with his and let a rare trace of hatred and defiance leak into the now flashing gray, the bonds loosening and the strings slackening in that instant.

But I knew I wasn't really free. That flame of hope had been blown out when I was sold like an animal the fourth time. I realized that escape, that freedom, was unattainable to a Bound Soul like myself. It was just the shattered glass of my mind coming together momentarily, reminding me that having a master was wrong, that made me act out.

He looked disgustedly down at his hand, it now being covered in the blood that had run down my cheek.

The light fire that had been previously burning in my eyes went out and I felt myself start to giggle in madness. He didn't see the life spark in my eyes.

Distantly, from within the depths of my mind, I hear the man curse under his breath, and suddenly I'm laughing hysterically.

I feel myself being pushed up a flight of stairs, and I half-wonder when I had been removed from my cage.

Then the sounds of the buyers - I know this because their voices are whispering, evil sounding voices - reaches my ears and I feel the stares of the hundreds of faces belonging to masked men sitting before a stage. A stage that I'm now standing on again.

I'm being sold yet again, I realize, and numbly I remember that this would be the thirteenth time. Only this time I'm not just being sold as a broken servant; I'm being sold as a broken, insane, and now blind servant.

I feel the laugh of the mad beginning to bubble up inside me, and my unseeing eyes glint with insanity.

Giggling quietly, my mouth twitching into a smug smirk as the men begin to place their bids for me I whisper the thought I have known since the first time I was shipped away from my home and sold as a servant to the highest bidder.

_"I am forever bound."_

I continue to laugh in that unsettling laugh throughout the rest of the night, and even after I stop, being put into yet another cage and surrounded by my own darkness, the sound echoes eerily around me in its haunting whisper.

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**A/N: **Happy Danny Angst Day...?

*Chuckles nervously* Uh, yeah... I've never even tried real angst before so... don't rip my throat out to violently, okay?

Thank for reading, reviews and comments appreciated.


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